Pool noodle duel between self-styled inventors dates back 30 years

RICK KOSTER

Alex Ballingall,Toronto Star

Rick Koster, 72, shows off some of the "water woggles" he claims to have invented in the mid-1980s. After his attempt to sell the pool toys fell apart, Koster has felt bitter and betrayed over not being recognized as the first creator of the now-ubiquitous floating plaything.

Bendable, buoyant and made of polyethylene foam, a mainstay summer water toy has churned up decades of discord between two Ontario men with competing claims to its creation story.

Rick Koster and Steve Hartman each insist they invented the pool noodle. And neither will budge from their bid for posterity.

The disagreement stretches back to the 1980s in Oakville and Mississauga, where the men say they independently discovered the fun of playing with floating foam tubes in the pool, and briefly worked together to manufacture and sell the toys.

Nearly 30 years on, the ubiquitous plaything — which neither Koster nor Hartman patented — is manufactured by several companies that make millions of noodles every year.

But the rift over the toy's origins remains. On one side, there's Koster, a 72-year-old retiree who feels robbed of his rightful legacy as the inventor of the toy he calls the Water Woggle. Then there's Hartman, CEO of a Brampton company that has made pool noodles for decades and wants to protect his family name and business reputation from Koster's claims.

"They took (my) concept, they saw the success of it, and they wanted to cash in on it," says Koster. "I want the truth to be told."

"For some reason he thinks he invented the foam rod," counters Hartman. "We were already making them, and making them for (use) in pools."

For Hartman, the inception of the pool noodle began with the creation of his company, Industrial Thermo Polymers (ITP), which he founded alongside his father in 1980. They started making backer rods, squishy foam tubing that's used in expansion joints in buildings and roadways, among other things.

It didn't take long for someone to throw one of the rods in the family swimming pool, Hartman says. "It seemed like anytime someone jumped in the pool, somebody grabbed one of these."

They soon realized they might have something profitable on their hands, and it "wasn't a leap to sell them," Hartman says.

Koster's invention story begins with his kids, competitive swimmers who inspired him to experiment with floating toys. By 1986, Koster had drawn up a series of ideas for floating noodles, but settled on the "Water Woggle," originally a white foam serpent with multicoloured spots and stripes taped on, as well as a foam head.

He started working on promotional material and visiting trade shows. Photographs Koster says are from the time show him smiling with crates of Woggles. He soon dropped the serpent head from the prototypes and opted for the long cylindrical foam tube one would recognize as the classic pool noodle.

"I had never seen anything like it," says Terry Martyniuk, owner of Pioneer Family Pools, which started selling Koster's Woggles around 1986-87. "It was amazing. Everybody that came into the store wanted two or three of them."

Martyniuk doesn't recall ITP pool noodles on the market during this time.

Unlike Koster, who has dated invoices, documents and promo material for his Woggles, Hartman says hasn't kept records of his business from that time. He also doesn't remember which stores stocked his product back then, citing the fact that it was 30 years ago.

He insists, however, that he was selling foam pool noodles in several colours before he even met Koster — when the dispute between competing noodle inventors took shape.

Koster says they started working together in 1990, when he approached ITP to mass produce his Water Woggles. The collaboration lasted several months, both Koster and Hartman say, but fell apart over a disagreement they each describe differently.

As Hartman remembers it, his company inked a deal with Koster to make Water Woggles, which he describes as a "sea serpent/monster thing" made from foam tubes. Hartman says Koster walked away from the arrangement when he found out ITP was already selling pool noodles.

"He made a leap and felt that what we were already doing breached this agreement," says Hartman.

Koster claims ITP betrayed him after he declined a "lowball" offer from a retailer to stock Woggles. Before he knew it, when reviewing an order destined for other stores, Koster says he found a cluster of pool noodles, which he describes as identical to his Woggle, that were being shipped to the retailer for sale.

He walked out and sued Hartman for stealing his idea, but eventually dropped the lawsuit because he couldn't afford the legal fees, he says — not because he gave up.

Hartman begs to differ. "He knew he was wrong and ran."

Within a few years, pool noodles would explode as a summertime toy sensation, says Jamie O'Rourke, a Tennessee entrepreneur who sold millions of "Funnoodles" between 1994 and 1998.

"There was nothing proprietary to it. Nobody had a patent on it," he says.

While Hartman maintains he's not preoccupied with getting credit for inventing the pool noodle, a perceived lack of recognition has been nagging at Koster for years. He even wrote an unpublished book about his experience in an effort to digest what happened and move on.

But he hasn't.

"You see your product sticking out the roof of a car. Kids going to the beach, having fun," he says. "It's like Groundhog Day every summer."

Tostsar News Service

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(1) Comments

By Ironhell|JUNE 28, 2014 10:13 PM

Its hard to digest something that's wronged you without restitution. If Koster has documentation to prove his invention, then he invented it. He also has the owner of a prominent poll seller how collaborates him. All I can say is that he should have patented his invention. I understand that the 80s was a more trusting era, but there were snakes in business then as well.